A time capsule of the greatest financial mania in the history of mankind, told in real-time by regular folks and patriots. May future generations better understand the madness of crowds, and how power and money corrupt.

I'm with you, Eric...I make a very decent salary for the area I'm in, and all I can afford, on paper, within REAL ratios is a 75K house.

The good news is that within the next few months around here, that's not going to be a problem any longer. Muwhahahaha...

The prices were so far removed from real, long term affordability that they MUST come back down. 8 years ago, a home in our town averaged 20-50K. They shot up to 150-175K. Now, we're back down to 90-120K...and that's since October.

After selling my home last fall, right before this all blew up, folks were willing to loan me 120K with no money down and a stated income. I KNEW I couldn't afford it and that prices would tank (thanks in part to you all here!) so I said no thank you and found a rental. Where I sit on my 5% down waiting to bottom feed.

No loans = no sales = continuted price drops to the point where loans are possible again. If you borrowed too much, and need to sell, send in those keys, baby!

Uh.. we've been saying that since at least 2005, possibly 2004 depending on which bear you ask?

Firstly (and taking a giant step back) is there anything uglier than a mortgage? I mean seriously. What's the avg. length of employment, 3 years? How many marriages last 30 years?

But as Americans we obviously have no reservations whatsoever in signing them. Interest Only for crissakes! Then "securitize" them in "tranches" and sprinkle more acronyms and derivitives than you can shake a stick at and you have the mess we see today.

Yeah, we talk about "physical" gold and moving abroad when what we should be talking about is making the 15 Year Mortgage "the standard". Can we get real here?

Can we get more serious about our jobs and businesses than our damn homes for a minute? Let's face facts, the "home as a retirement plan" is dead. Possibly forever. Since it will no longer be possible to use your home as a never ending ATM can we build them so they can last for 30 years and be paid off in 15!?

"Can anyone here think of any possible way they can keep housing prices at these insane levels?"

There's two ways. We go back to the insane lending standards we had during the bubble, or we see big wage inflation. Unfortunately we can't go back to the bubble lending standards because like you said no one is going to buy them again. As for wage inflation I'm sure McDonalds is eager to start paying people $25 an hour to flip burgers.